The Islands of Unwisdom

by Robert Graves

  ***

  New Year’s Day found us in fourteen degrees North, which is almost the latitude of Manila, and the wind being easterly, we ran due west at a good rate, the mast and yards holding staunchly. Pedro Fernandez confided in me that he hoped soon to sight the large island of Guam, about a hundred leagues west of the Philippines, which is separated from another, named Serpana, by a channel ten leagues long. On the 3rd of January, to his great relief, we came upon these very islands and sailed between them, on the Guam side, following in the track of Magellan, who had discovered this channel seventy-five years before. The land was low and well wooded.

  A large number of sea-going canoes shot out from a cove to welcome us. Unnerved by eager expectation of food, a sailor who was reefing the foresail lost his hold and fell into the sea, and his comrades could not find a single rope of sufficient length to throw to his rescue. But Myn knew of one: it was stretched across the poop and had the Barretos’ washing tied upon it. He had the good sense to fling one end of the rope over the taffrail, just as the unfortunate sailor rose gasping to the surface in our wake. He caught it and was hauled to safety, God be praised! Then because it was Myn, not one of the crew, who had given Doña Ysabel’s shifts and Don Diego’s shirts a ducking in sea-water, he earned a slight reprimand only.

  The canoes came closer. They were double-ended, so that the crews could advance or retreat without having to turn them broadside on to an enemy. Magellan had called this group Las Islas de las Latinas (‘The Islands of the Lateen Sails’), but his crew Las Islas de los Ladrones (‘The Islands of the Thieves’) and the name sticks. The Ladrones were a lusty-looking race, reasonably fair and well-featured, though with lank, black hair and narrow, retreating brows. Knowing well what to expect from a galleon, they came so eagerly in search of gifts that several canoes collided; the occupants were flung into the water but righted their craft with ease and clambered merrily aboard again. We lay to, but did not drop anchor.

  They brought coconuts, bananas, water, baskets of rice and some very large fish, crying charume, which means ‘Friends’ and herrequepe, which means ‘Give us iron!’ Never in my life have I seen vendors so eager to sell, or emptors so eager to buy: these islanders run mad after iron, which they value more than gold, and our poor fellows were so distraught with thirst that they would have bound themselves into a ten years’ slavery for a gill or two of water. But Sergeant Andrada and the Boatswain’s mate, having consulted together, forbade any man to cheapen the value of iron by accepting too little in return, and made arrangements to buy and sell in bulk. They bargained with the leader of the Ladrones, who came aboard with an escort. It was agreed to set two hundredweight of victuals against every pound of iron, whether it were hammers, chains, spade-heads, keys, bolts, hinges or pieces of broken armour; but Doña Ysabel sent the Purser to see that nothing was sold except the property of the men, and he removed from the heap on deck more than fifteen pounds’ weight—the barrel of an arquebus that had exploded, hoops from water-casks long since burned, and parts of the ship’s gear.

  The Chieftain took this in very bad part, calling Don Gaspar a ladrón, and threatening violence. The affair would have ended badly, had not Matia brought out his pack of needles, scissors and razors, and thrown half of them into the common stock. These goods were reckoned at three times the value of their weight; so that our suffering people were given a new hold on life by the abundance of food purchased.

  We of the afterguard made our own bargains and revelled in the taste of fresh fruit and pure water; but having another wide gulf to cross before we reached the Philippines, and then a difficult passage to negotiate through the islands before reaching Manila, we would have bought more food at whatever cost, especially rice and oil of coconut, had not an accident interrupted our traffic. The Governeress, leaning over the rails, exclaimed in a fury: ‘Look, Diego! Look! Do you see what that thin savage yonder holds in his hand?—a piece of cask-hoop! Tell him to restore it at once, Diego! It is my property and worth a dozen good coconuts.’

  Don Diego grabbed an arquebus from a soldier, propped it against the rail, took a long aim, and fired. The ball struck the unsuspecting native in the throat and killed him, as it also killed the man behind him. Instantly the canoes darted off and we did not see them again, or any others like them.

  Captain Lopez then asked leave to take the long-boat in search of water, pigs and coconuts. Doña Ysabel gave her consent; but the Chief Pilot said that, much as he desired to comply with the Governeress’s wish, he lacked gear for lowering the boat.

  ‘Let us heave it over the side by main force,’ said the Captain, and when asked how it was to be got aboard again, answered: ‘There is no need, it can be towed behind us.’

  The Chief Pilot shook his head. ‘Not through the ground swell which we shall encounter at the approaches to the Philippines; it would be swamped and sink. Once we are among the islands, we cannot do without a boat.’

  Captain Lopez arguing his case angrily, he stopped his ears, and because the Governeress did not care to lose a boat worth fifty pesos or more, it remained on deck.

  We were now running before the wind. The Chief Pilot had never navigated in these waters, but recollecting that the extreme easterly point of the Philippines is Cape Santo Espiritu, which lies in twelve degrees North, or thereabouts, he set a course for it.

  Not to prolong the account of our sufferings, at daybreak on Sunday, the 14th of January, we sighted a mountain peak at a great distance, and Pedro Fernandez announced that yonder lay the Philippines of which we had come in search.

  ‘The Virgin be praised!’ whispered a soldier whose skull was dried to a death’s head and whose legs were thin as crutches. ‘Soon I shall hear mass and seek God.’

  Chapter 24

  COBOS BAY

  We were no longer sailing through uncharted waters and several of the ship’s company claimed to know better than the Chief Pilot what course should be shaped. The most insistent was Major Moran, who once, while serving as page to the Governor-General’s Lady, had accompanied her on a pleasure jaunt among these islands in a state-barge. That afternoon, when within a league of the coast, which had been hidden from us by dense rain showers, we observed a small opening running north and south. ‘Why, what good fortune!’ exclaimed the Major. ‘That is the Strait of San Bernardino, separating the islands of Samar and Luzon. I know it as well as the sleeve of my doublet: follow the curve of the Luzon coast, and you are brought straight into Manila Bay. Nothing could be easier; there’s deep water all the way until you come to the Tuley Reef, south of Fortun Islet.’

  The sun had been obscured since the Friday, when the Chief Pilot had last used his cross-staff and reckoned that we were in thirteen degrees, but the wind being north-easterly, and a heavy ground swell coming from the west, he could not be certain whether we were still on our course. His intention was to navigate San Bernardino Strait, which lies in twelve and a half degrees, with the wind astern. At first he paid close attention to the Major, but as we neared the opening he saw that it measured a good deal less than a league across; whereas Juan de la Isla, who knew this coast well, had once told him that the Strait was nearly ten leagues wide, with an island set in the middle. The coastline being still shrouded in mist, he decided not to place overmuch reliance on the Major’s childhood memories. If the San Geronimo entered the channel and became embayed, there would be no means of getting her out again in the teeth of the wind; besides, it would soon be night. He brought her on a wind, hoping to fix our position by a star, or by the next day’s sun, and thus gain some notion of where we were.

  The officers, enraged that we had sheered off, went in a body to Doña Ysabel, who summoned Pedro Fernandez to the Great Cabin and demanded an explanation from him. Not in the least out of countenance, he examined the Major in their presence, and trapped him into such absurd contradictions as caused Captain Lopez and Ensign Torres to laugh aloud. But Don Diego still maintained that a chief pilot who failed to make use
of local knowledge deserved the strappado.

  ‘God has been pleased to guide us thus far,’ Pedro Fernandez answered warmly, ‘and I doubt not that he will also bring us into Manila, unless we try His patience by needless folly. Captain Barreto, if you bore the least responsibility for the safety of this ship, you would sing in an altogether different strain.’

  Doña Ysabel commanded him to silence. ‘We are agreed that this is the Strait of San Bernardino,’ she said, ‘and you must either conform to public opinion or earn my anger.’

  ‘Hoist me, hang me, or throw me overboard,’ he replied obstinately, ‘it is all one. But I refuse to steer my ship into that trap. Let the Major play at being chief pilot, if you will, and wreck us all on the nearest reef. You and your family will then take to the long-boat with all the able-bodied men, abandoning the women, children and sick to my charge; and I shall be left to perform a miracle of salvage.’

  ‘When we get to Manila, you will answer for those words, you stinking cod-fish!’ Don Diego threatened him.

  ‘We shall none of us get there,’ he said, ‘unless the master of this vessel is allowed to make his own decisions!’ and strode out of the room.

  There was no further interference with his seamanship. When the San Geronimo had stood off a safe distance, sail was lowered and we passed an anxious night tossing about in the swell, battered by sudden squalls, with neither moon nor stars showing. Day broke, the wind fell light, and the land was not to be seen for mist. Everyone complained that the Chief Pilot should have taken the channel while he had the chance; now it would never be found. But presently a headland loomed dimly to the north-west, and Pedro Fernandez ordered a bonnet to be laced to the foresail. He proposed to round the headland and coast on, keeping the lead going until a clean bottom was found, when he would drop anchor, and wait for the mist to clear.

  As soon as the foresail was hoisted, there came a crack and a rush: the additional weight of the bonnet had parted the robbins and the sail collapsed like a tent on the living skeletons who were handling it. Crawling from beneath, they swore that, for all they cared, it might lie and rot for ever where it had fallen. But the Boatswain warned them that we would drift on the reefs unless they made haste; so they groaningly re-bent it, securing it to the yard with new robbins; but these also parted, and down it fell once more. Damian’s rope-end and most blasphemous curses were needed to set it a third time.

  When I looked aloft, my heart sank. The ship, kept head-on to the wind all night, had laboured heavily: and I saw that nearly all the rigging had carried away, but especially the running rigging of the foremast, and only a single shroud remained to support it on either side. ‘Don’t eye that mast, Don Andrés,’ said Jaume at my elbow, ‘for God’s sake don’t eye it, nod at it, or breathe on it—lest it go by the board!’

  Yet it was a good spar and did not give way. In the meantime, an angry and excited babble arose both fore and aft. Some took the reefs for those of Catanduanes Island, to the north of San Bernardino, where many a good vessel had foundered; they said that the islanders line the rocks to shoot at any man who seeks to swim ashore, and will stick him as full of arrows as a porcupine has quills. Others held that we were caught between those reefs and Luzon, and would never get clear again. But the Major, to knit up his tattered reputation as a geographer, swore that we had missed the channel, which lay astern, and that the ship should immediately be put about at all hazards.

  Everyone feared that we should soon have to swim for our lives, and Don Diego, running up from below, struck at the mizzen-mast with an axe, intending to assure himself of support while in the water. ‘Avast there, your lordship!’ cried Damian in horror. Pedro Fernandez wrested the axe from him and bore it off to the Great Cabin in evidence against Don Diego; for it has always been the law at sea that the master of a vessel must strike the first three blows at any mast that is to be jettisoned, and that the punishment for whoever dares anticipate him is death by hanging.

  The Governeress had dressed herself hurriedly in mourning clothes and seemed to be making her peace with God before the end came: her eyes turned to Heaven, and a book of devotions in her hand, she was heaving deep sighs, calling piously on all the Saints in turn. Before Pedro Fernandez could begin his denunciation, Don Diego stole up softly from behind; dagger in hand. By great good fortune, Captain Lopez was able to disarm him, saying sternly: ‘If the Chief Pilot can save us, it would be folly to murder him. If he cannot, the folly would be greater still: consider, my lord, you would die with blood on your hands and bum for ever!’

  ‘This madman was about to dismast us, your Excellency,’ shouted Pedro Fernandez.

  Don Diego yelled, cursed, and threatened dire vengeance, but the Captain told him: ‘My lord, do not quit this cabin without leave from the Chief Pilot or, by God, you will find this dagger planted where it will cause you inconvenience!’

  Doña Ysabel seemed altogether unconcerned with what went on in her presence. She was deep in the De profundis clamavi, which she repeated with fervour in a steady voice.

  Pedro Fernandez returned on deck, where everyone crowded around him, demanding to know where we were—as though the name of the headland were written on it in enigmatic letters which only he could read. Major Moran was loudest in his enquiries, but Don Luis dealt him a thrust in the groin with his knee, and said that an evil spirit must have possessed him to decoy us to our deaths.

  At last Doña Ysabel appeared on the quarter-deck. ‘Well, Pilot,’ she asked calmly, ‘what have you to plead in your defence?’

  ‘Is there a charge preferred against me?’

  ‘Do not answer me back! Where are we?’

  ‘You know well that this is my first voyage in these waters, and since I do not dabble in witchcraft, I cannot tell where we are.’

  ‘Yet you signed on as a skilled pilot! Why not consult your charts and instruments?’

  ‘I own no chart of the East Indies, and you can see for yourself that the coast is befogged and the sky too heavily overcast for me to take the sun. However, if you will restrain your brother from either knifing me or wrecking the ship, God may yet grant us a reprieve.’

  He ordered two sailors to secure the foremast with a couple of backstays, but they were not to cut up our anchor-cable for that purpose—the mizzen-stay would serve, if nothing else could be found. Another was to stand by the anchor, ready to let go as soon as soundings were struck. All three turned their backs on him, muttered indecencies and shambled away.

  It is not given to sinful man to know at what moment God will grant or withhold His mercy: we rounded the headland, a breeze sprang up, the masts held, and suddenly our bows were turned straight into a snug bay which we entered at speed, though reefs lay to either side!

  Three natives in a canoe came out to reconnoitre and, without hailing us, manoeuvred to windward. The crew cheered them feebly, and the noise brought the Major to the taffrail. ‘Come, my lord,’ cried the Chief Pilot, ‘since you know the islands well, address those men in their own language and ask them to show us an anchorage!’

  The Major shouted something, the canoe came alongside and two of its occupants scrambled aboard. One exclaimed, with grinning friendliness: ‘Duilacapaylat? Juatxir, bulis?’4 The other reproved him, and said to us in halting Castilian: ‘You are Spaniards. God bless King Philip! I speak good Spanish of Manila; he only three words of English, learned long ago from Captain Don Tomás Candish. He piloted Don Tomás’s ship between these islands, by God, and received rich gifts. He hopes to fall in once again with Don Tomás.’

  ‘What land is this?’ asked Captain Lopez.

  ‘Yonder is the Cape of Espiritu Santo; and this, by God, is Cobos Bay. Bound for Manila, yes? You are dead on your course, gentlemen.’

  ‘Show us the anchorage,’ said the Chief Pilot.

  He shouted to the man in the canoe, who thereupon paddled ahead as our guide. We dropped anchor in the middle of the Bay, in fourteen fathoms. This miracle took place at nine o’cloc
k on Monday, the 15th of January, 1596.

  ‘Who holds Manila now?’ we anxiously asked our new friend.

  ‘Don Luis Perez de las Marinas is the present Governor, by God. Don Gomez, his father, was lately murdered on an expedition to the Moluccas.’

  This answer gave us hearty relief. We had heard rumours in Peru that Taycosama, the Emperor of Japan, who claimed the vassalage of the Philippines, was preparing a great fleet to attack the city; but our friend now told us that amicable relations had been re-established, and that the Emperor had even given permission for four Franciscan friars to preach the gospel in his realm.

  The English-speaking pilot then asked for news of Captain Candish, and was grieved to hear that he had died in the Island of Ascension a year or two previously.

  ***

  The inhabitants of Cobos Bay are dusky-coloured, with long, black hair, not very tall and much tattooed; I saw no sign of a beard even on the elder men. They confess Christ—or, at least, we saw a cross erected on a mound near their village—and also acknowledge the suzerainty of the King of Castile, though I did not think to enquire whether they either pay him tribute or enjoy his protection. Their headman, carrying a white wand of office, came out in a canoe followed by twenty others well laden with food. Like all persons of importance in the neighbourhood, he wore large golden ear-rings, ivory bangles, anklets of gilded bronze (which our soldiers at first mistook for gold) and a long, collarless tunic, of a stiff native cloth called medriñaque, reaching to his calves.

  After genuflecting before the Virgin at the mainmast, and bidding us welcome, he let us know that he was a civilized person, who knew the value of money and would not be satisfied with mere promises in payment for his wares. A regular market was soon set up amidships at which he fixed the prices: a pig cost two or three reals, according to its weight, a fowl upwards of six maravedis. Any man who had a knife or dagger to sell might reckon it at a peso, and glass beads were worth twice their weight in silver. Matia came to the rescue of the troops with the remaining half of his venture, which earned him great praise; and I was able to provide for the crew, as well as for myself, by selling a parcel of beads bought at the auction of Miguel Llano’s effects. Thereafter both sailors and soldiers ransacked their boxes, and all contributed to the common fund whatever they had left of value.